Comment

The testimony of John W. Dean III before the Ervin Committee, has thus far withstood challenge as to its fundamental accuracy. The narrative of his White House career, which he spent 6 hours reading into the record on his first day as a witness, may contain some self-serving interpretations & some errors of fact, & it may be that later witnesses will produce evidence of dissembling on the part of the young lawyer, who was once a protege of John Mitchell, but the document as a whole has a clear ring of authenticity & conveys a feeling about life in the higher echelons of the Adm. which confirms the observations of many. Perhaps the most striking thing about it is the total absence of moral concern. When its leaders were presented with an intelligence-gathering scheme using muggers, kidnappers, wiretappers & prostitutes, the matter was discussed only in terms of feasibility and cost. No one was outraged & no one was disturbed by the fact that the techniques were illegal. The scheme was rejected on the ground of impracticality. When the Watergate felons were apprehended, their employers sought to dissociate themselves from them & defend White House personnel surreptitiously by illegal means. Dean's commentary suggests that he, like the Pres. & other White House figures, was untroubled by the moral aspects, but somewhat later, troubled by the legal ones...